


Good Cop, Bog Cop

by insideofadog



Series: Dragon Age Nonsense [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 00:31:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12200379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insideofadog/pseuds/insideofadog
Summary: A response to a tumblr prompt: Does Knight Captain Liam and the Bog Unicorn ever go on a dragon age version buddy cop adventure? I feel like it could be amazing *rustles excitedly*CHALLENGE ACCEPTED





	Good Cop, Bog Cop

“Maker’s breath, if someone told me you could smell worse than you already do, I woulda sworn they were lying.”

The bog unicorn plodded along next to him, ignoring both his complaints and the terrible sulphurous stench emerging from its bulging saddlebags.

A week out of the Frostbacks, an unseasonably hot autumn had descended on Ferelden, and Knight-Captain Liam was melting in his armor. Unfortunately, in the last day or so, his delivery had thawed as well, and, none-too-fresh to begin with, was evidently starting to rot.

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” he muttered.

* * *

“Liam, my office—now,” Commander Cullen had bellowed, striding past Liam, who had been on his way to the tavern to have a beer and contemplate his retirement.

“Andraste’s ass,” he muttered, turning around to follow the Commander.

“What was that?” The Commander whirled around, arms crossed, in a move probably calculated to make his stupid fur coat swirl intriguingly. Liam somehow managed to not swoon. In his day, Templars did not wear ostentatious fabrics or have happy endings with mages.

“Andraste’s ass,  _Commander_ ,” Liam clarified graciously.

Cullen stomped away to his office, and Liam chalked up a qualified win.

“So what are you so mad about?” he grumbled when he arrived at the Commander’s office a good fifteen minutes later.

The Commander stood up, his hands braced over his desk. Nobody was impressed.

“I’m not mad,” the Commander ground out. “Josephine is mad.”

Liam was not relieved that the Commander’s precious feelings were not hurt. There was one person in the world who Liam cared about being mad, and it wasn’t Josephine or Cullen, and that particular person wasn’t ever really all  _that_ mad. When the Inquisitor seemed angry, she was just really sad because Liam had been an asshole, and she usually wanted to talk about things and cram tea in his face. And since Liam wasn’t going to change for anyone—too old—and he wasn’t going to start drinking tea, and he really fucking hated it when he still managed to upset her even though things were supposed to be different—he stayed away from her.

“What makes you think I care about whoever Josephine is?” Liam asked.

“The Inquisitor cares, Liam. You trashed some minor lord’s luggage when you searched it for evidence of blood magic—which you didn’t find, I might note—”

“Lord Godfrey. Fereldan. Didn’t find it because he didn’t have it on him. But he still has it. And I’ll get it.”

“The man collects antiquities and is related to half of Ferelden’s nobility, Liam. You can’t just trash his carriage for months at time and hope for the book to show up.”

“Of course I can. Don’t believe me?”

“Of course I believe you,” the Commander hissed. “I believe that he has the book, and so does the Inquisitor. I also believe that you’d trash his carriage just for spite. But when Josephine’s unhappy…”

Well, at least  _Evelyn_ hadn’t gone soft.

“When Josephine’s unhappy I keep doing what I want because I catch blood mages, not suck up to nobles.”

The Commander nodded. “Good. I hoped you’d say that.”

“Yeah, well, you know I live to make you happy,” Liam lied. Liam hated the Commander less than most people, but he’d made Evelyn cry at least twice.

The Commander ignored Liam and kept talking. Liam knew this trick, and began to get suspicious. He scratched his moustache.

“You’re taking a present–a valuable rarity–from the Inquisition to Lord Godfrey’s house. Infiltrate the house when you get there and find proof of blood magic.”

“Infiltrate?”

“We both know you can be silent when you want to be. Evelyn thinks you can figure it out, so just do it.”

Might as well, then, he supposed. The leaves were nice in the fall, and there’d be nobody annoying around, just him and his horse. He’d been thinking about buying a new horse when he retired.

“Good,” the Commander nodded. “Let me introduce you to your partner.”

* * *

“I hate you, you know that?” Liam told the bog unicorn.

The bog unicorn remained unconcerned with both Liam’s feelings and its own state of advanced decay.

“Sorry, Ser Liam, but we can’t get a horse near that crate,” Knight-Captain Rylen had informed Liam. Rylen was lying. He wasn’t sorry at all. “They apparently can’t stand the smell.”

“I don’t need you to explain that to me, boy,” Liam had snapped. “Being old and having a moustache doesn’t mean you can’t smell bullshit. I don’t care how frozen Trevelyan says that egg is, I can smell it, too. What’s anyone want with a rotten dragon egg?”

Rylen claimed ignorance, then wisely fled.

So the delivery had prematurely thawed and it smelled, and the horse had died ages ago, and it smelled. And Liam was walking.

Liam was only slightly comforted by the idea that the egg, at least, would be staying behind, and the fact that he’d get to put a fist in Lord Godfrey’s smug face. He entertained the thought of leaving the bog unicorn behind, but he knew Evelyn would be disappointed, so he didn’t make any plans.

“We’ll reach the manor tonight. I’ll kick in the door and you stay in the woods so nobody shits themselves.”

The bog unicorn rolled its dull, lifeless eye at Liam and let out a skeptical crackle from the depths of its cavernous chest.

“All right, you got a point. People shitting themselves can be helpful. I guess you can come.”

Three hours later, Liam and the bog unicorn left the manor and headed back to Skyhold. Liam and the bog unicorn were covered in blood—most of it belonging to the annoying cultists, some of it Liam’s, and none of it the bog unicorn’s because its veins were filled with some kind of dark yellow ichor that did not “bleed,” exactly.

The disgusting egg was gone, tossed into the ritual chamber as a distraction. The smell had proved more potent than Liam had anticipated, so Liam had grabbed the hostage and just killed the cultists who hadn’t been incapacitated by nausea and made it outside. The bog unicorn went inside and stomped the rest.

It had stayed in there a minute or two after all the noise had died down, and Liam got suspicious.

“Hey,” he yelled. “Get out here. Quit bein’ creepy.”

The bog unicorn picked its way up the steps from the chamber, dripping with blood and chewing on something that might or might not have been a heart.

“C’mon, let’s go. We’ll have to camp out tonight. I think Lady Gregory was more pissed about getting the egg smell out of her basement than she was about being a hostage, and she really hates the sight of you.”

Liam grabbed the saddlebags and slung them over his shoulder. The bog unicorn walked a polite distance away from Liam and shook itself. Human blood and some fleshy bits of indeterminate origin flew off of it.

“Yeah, I know. We can take a dip in the river on the way back to get that off, but I’m not gonna put this lotion on you. I know Evelyn said I had to, but a man has his limits.”

The bog unicorn rustled philosophically.


End file.
